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| Birth Name(s) : Abba |
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Full Abba Biography
They remain a fixture of radio playlists and have reportedly sold more than 370 million records. ABBA was also the first pop group from mainland Europe to enjoy consistent success in the charts of the English-speaking world (mainly the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand), and its enormous popularity subsequently opened the doors for other Continental European acts. The music of ABBA has been re-arranged into a blockbuster musical Mamma Mia! that has toured worldwide and is in production for a movie version to be released in 2008.
His band and the Hep Stars sometimes crossed paths while touring, and on such an occasion in June 1966 Ulvaeus and Andersson decided to write a song together. This, their first attempt, was "Isn't It Easy to Say", later recorded by The Hep Stars. Stig Anderson, manager of the Hep Stars and founder of the Polar Music label, saw much potential in the collaboration, and encouraged them to compose more.
After the European part of the tour, in March 1977, ABBA played eleven dates in Australia. The trip was accompanied by mass hysteria and unprecedented media attention, and is vividly captured on film in ABBA: The Movie, directed by Lasse Hallström.
The Australian tour and its subsequent ABBA: The Movie produced some ABBA lore, as well. Agnetha Fältskog's blonde good looks had long made her the band's 'pin-up girl', a role she disdained. During the Australian tour, she performed in a skin-tight white jumpsuit, causing one Australian newspaper to use the headline "Agnetha's bottom tops dull show". When asked about this at a news conference, she replied: "Don't they have bottoms in Australia?"
By 1978, ABBA were a megagroup. They converted a disused cinema into the Polar Music Studio, a new state-of-the-art studio in Stockholm which was used by several other bands (for example, Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door and Genesis' Duke were recorded there).Music sample:
On October 19, 1979, the tour resumed in Western Europe where the band played 23 sold-out gigs, including an unprecedented six sold-out nights at London's Wembley Arena.
In mid-February, Benny and Anni-Frid announced they were filing for divorce; later it surfaced their marriage had been an uphill struggle for years, and Benny had already met another woman, Mona Nörklit, whom he married in November the same year.
Back in the studio in early August, the group had changed plans for the rest of the year: they settled for a Christmas release of a double album compilation of all their past successes to be named The Singles: The First Ten Years. New songwriting and recording sessions took place, and during October and November, they released the singles "The Day Before You Came"/"Cassandra" and "Under Attack"/"You Owe Me One", the A-sides of which were included on the compilation album.
The group travelled to London to promote The Singles: The First Ten Years in the first week of November 1982, appearing on Saturday Superstore and The Late, Late Breakfast Show, and also to Germany in the second week, to perform on Show Express.
Nowadays Andersson and Ulvaeus are frequently at premières of the musical Mamma Mia! or other galas, every now and then joined by Frida Lyngstad, as at the show's fifth anniversary in London in April 2004. All four members attended the première in Stockholm of the Swedish staging of the musical in February 2005, but were not seen nor photographed together. January 2007 saw Fältskog and Ulvaeus attend the show's last performance.
In October 1984, Ulvaeus and Andersson released the musical concept double album Chess, created together with lyricist Tim Rice, and with vocals by among others Elaine Paige, Murray Head, Barbara Dickson and swedes Tommy Körberg and Björn Skifs. The singles "One Night in Bangkok" and "I Know Him So Well" were both huge successes. In May 1986, the musical premièred in the West End of London, and ran for almost three years. On Broadway it opened in April 1988, but closed within two months due to very bad reviews. The musical has been staged regularly on small scale to great success, and even the concert version is popular. In Stockholm, the composers staged Chess På Svenska ('Chess in Swedish') in 2003, with new material.
The enormous interest in the Gold compilation saw the release of More ABBA Gold: More ABBA Hits in 1993. This collection also contained the bonus track "I Am the City", one of the unreleased songs from the 1982 recording sessions.
In 1994, two Australian movies caught the attention of the world's media, both focussing on admiration for ABBA: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding. The same year, Thank You for the Music, a four-disc box set comprising all the group's hits and stand-out album tracks, was released with the involvement of all four members. For this release, several demo versions and odd tracks were discovered in the Polar vaults. |
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